New York state apparently is just trying to squeeze as much extreme liberal legislation through as it can before people start noticing.

Most notable was the Reproductive Health Act, signed into law earlier this week.

The bill’s stated purpose was to codify Roe v. Wade in case it was overturned by the Supreme Court, but most commentators focused on the fact that the bill would allow babies to be aborted until literally the moment of birth and that non-doctors would also be able to perform abortions.

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If just to compound the outrage, Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered several landmarks — including the top of One World Trade Center, the tallest building in the United States — lit up pink to “celebrate” the controversial bill.

Just one day after that bill was signed into law, the state legislature decided it was going to take another step further to the left — giving state financial aid to college students who are illegal immigrants.

The DREAM Act had been kicking around the New York state legislature for quite some time, but Republicans had controlled the state Senate until January.

That having been changed, the bill passed the Senate on Wednesday, followed by the state Assembly passing it just hours later, according to the New York Daily News.

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The party-line vote was 40-20 in the Senate and 90-37 in the Assembly. Cuomo says he plans to sign the bill.

“While the administration in Washington is committed to putting up walls, the New York State Assembly is committed to breaking them down,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said after the bill was passed.

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Manhattan Democrat Assemblywoman Carmen De La Rosa, who sponsored the bill, said what happened Wednesday was “a symbol that (Dreamers) will be guaranteed an education and that the door for higher education is open to all children in New York State.”

Right. Well, instead of lighting up One World Trade Center pink to celebrate the DREAM Act, how about we celebrate by putting an animatronic King Kong on the Empire State Building, throwing taxpayer money into the wind?

“The DREAM Act is a nightmare and a slap in the face for all the hardworking taxpayers who play by the rules and struggle to afford the cost of a college education,” Republican Sen. Daphne Jordan said.

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And for what reason? Well, while the DREAM Act has been proposed for a long time, Democrats made it clear in the language they used that they meant to use its passage as a rebuke to the Trump administration. And it won’t stop there: Now that they control both houses of the legislature, the Democrats plan to take up initiatives like giving state driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants and even allowing them to vote.

According to The New York Times, the New York Immigration Coalition was pushing lawmakers to “dream bigger” with other initiatives like health care and more funding for legal services for immigrants.

“The election of Trump and the fact that he made immigration a central theme of his presidency has made immigration a more prominent issue at the state level,” Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute at the New York University School of Law, told The Times.

In other words, they’re competing with each other to find ways to throw away taxpayers’ money.

Democrats have countered that the illegal immigrant populations bring in significant funding to the state and that a more educated base of illegal immigrants will lead to higher-paid illegal immigrants, which mean more tax dollars.

Both don’t take into effect a fuller analysis of the costs illegal immigrants impose on a state or the costs that would be imposed by attracting more of them — something state financial aid for college would almost certainly do.

But, perhaps the best argument against the DREAM Act came from Republican State Sen. James Seward.

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“How am I supposed to tell families in my Senate district that adequate state aid to help afford college isn’t available for them, but it is available for others who are in this country illegally?” Seward said.

Just tell them that their state is competing with other blue states “to provide a higher level of protection to immigrants.” They’ll understand, I’m sure.

C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between America and Southeast Asia. He became a staunch right-winger at the age of three: While watching a clip of Ronald Reagan, he told his mother (to her great horror), "Mom, I'm a Republican." Except for a brief, scarring and inexplicable late high-school dalliance with Ralph Nader and his ilk, he's never looked back.
Aside from politics, he enjoys literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, jazz, spending time with his wife, drinking coffee and watching Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties). He is the proud owner of a very lazy West Highland white terrier and an extraordinary troublesome poodle mix of indeterminate provenance. His proudest accomplishments include reading the entirety of Thomas Pynchon's published oeuvre.